Kane (BBW Billionaire Romance) (3 page)

F
ingers curled tightly
around her cell phone now that Lindsey had brought it upstairs, Daniella watched Kane where he sat at the far end of the couch. He had a laptop balanced on his knees, his big hands all but dwarfing the device but his touch light enough that he operated the keyboard without any problems as he sifted through Merl Wagner’s police record. Every minute or so he cut a scowling glance in her direction.

With a standing order to keep her butt planted on the couch so Kane didn’t have to worry about her passing out, Daniella shifted, almost working up enough nerve to at least demand that he return her paperwork. His black as night gaze landed on her and she melted into the corner of the sofa, her mouth squeezing into a furious pucker.

He lifted one dark brow. She looked away and stared blankly at his bookcase.

“I need to leave. I only have an hour before visitation is over at the jail.”

“You’re not paying him to sign away whatever rights you think he has,” Kane growled.

Her head snapped back in his direction, her cheeks flushing dark red as her grip on the phone tightened.

“If I don’t, he’s selling those rights to someone else!” Her throat constricted, the words choking her as they came out. “There’s a buyer already…Merl said—”

Remembering what Merl had said froze her tongue and made all the blood drain from her face. She had the sensation of falling in slow motion then Kane’s computer clattered to the floor. His hands wrapped around her shoulders. He slid closer, pushing her against the couch’s corner to pin her there.

“Breathe,” he commanded.

Her vision swam in and out of focus but she complied with the order. “You don’t understand the kind of people he’s threatening to sell her to.”

“Sadly,” Kane answered, “I understand far better than you.”

Keeping one hand on Daniella’s shoulder to steady her, Kane extended his arm and retrieved the computer. When he showed her the display, it wasn’t Merl’s criminal record onscreen.

It was Lynn’s.

A date was highlighted, the day and month just forty-eight hours before Lynn had come to stay with Daniella that final time. Lynn had been booked under North Carolina Statute Section 14-204.

“I know she was selling herself,” Daniella softly protested, her hand brushing at his so he would stop touching her. The contact wasn’t a distraction she could afford. Whatever help Kane intended to offer, it wasn’t because being around Daniella made his skin prickle in an inviting way or his chest constrict with need.

She pushed at the offending hand once more. He dropped it, but moved his entire body closer, crowding her against the side of the couch. He highlighted another date just a few days before the first. This time Lynn had been cited for loitering with the purpose of committing prostitution.

“How many clients you think she had in the week she conceived Christine?” he asked, his voice dropping yet another degree colder.

“She promised that she—”

“Always made them wear condoms?” he interrupted with a laugh. “Come on, you’re not that stupid. It’s not the hooker who decides when a condom is used, not at Lynn’s level, at least.”

Putting the computer aside, Kane turned Daniella toward him, cupped her chin and forced her to meet his gaze.

“Look, no one is listed as the father on Christine’s birth certificate. You did that right. Whatever money you were going to give Merl, save it for the attorney. Once Merl tells his buddies you’re handing out free money, you’ll need a good lawyer to make every last one of the potential baby daddies try to prove they’re Christine’s biological father.”

She shook her head, wishing it was as easy as Kane made it sound. Twisting her chin loose from his grip, she looked at her phone, waking it and thumbing through to her messages.

“I got this when I was at work yesterday.”

Kane took the phone, read the message from Daniella’s seventy-two year old neighbor then enlarged the photo that the old man had attached.

He sent the photo to his computer and retreated down to his end of the couch, tapping away at the keyboard in silence for a few seconds. Fishing his own phone out of his jacket pocket, he pressed a contact number and growled an order into it.

“Find Nazarov. I need to talk to him.”

Leaving the couch, he walked over to his desk, put the computer down then stared at Daniella.

She met his gaze, her chin lifting at a stubborn angle. “I didn’t come here to ask for your help. I thought it was my last chance to thank you for saving Christine—in case I have to leave the state.”

“Apparently I did a half-assed job at saving her,” he mused, his gaze casting around the room and finding nowhere to land in the impersonal, windowless space. “I trust you did not go home last night.”

“No,” she agreed. “As soon as I got the picture, I picked Christine up from daycare and spent the night at a hotel. Then I took her to a friend here in Raleigh, one Lynn would have never heard of, so she couldn’t have mentioned the woman to Merl.”

Kane nodded. Pressing the intercom button on his desk, he spoke to Lindsey. “Have Mr. Henley come to my office.”

“I’m having someone escort you to pick up Christine in one of our vehicles. Your car will be moved to our parking structure. He’ll take you to get some essentials for you and the baby, then he’ll take you to a safe house.”

Listening to Kane, Daniella’s expression stretched as disbelief flooded through her. He was actually going to help? With the way he had acted earlier, she had formed the impression that he wasn’t the kind of man who helped others merely because he could. His delivering Christine had seemed like a one-off, an act brought on by exigent circumstances, after which the infant once again became someone else’s problem.

That was a terrible way to think about a helpless baby.

“I don’t understand,” she started. “Why are you doing this?”

“Your sister’s pimp is in deep with a motorcycle club that has strong ties to some Eastern European white slavers.” Kane explained as he sank into the overstuffed leather chair behind his desk. “From what’s in her file and Merl’s, the MC ran your sister when Merl was in jail in exchange for keeping him protected from the other inmates.”

Daniella looked away. Kane’s tone had turned mechanical, robotic, and she didn’t want to cry in front of a robot. She couldn’t stop the tears, just didn’t want to look at him as they streamed down her face.

“I can fold everything into an existing federal contract on the Europeans,” he added.

She wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be some kind of answer as to why he was helping, but she no longer cared. She needed Kane, even if she disliked him.

F
alling
down the rabbit hole of researching Merl Wagner and his associates, Kane emerged nauseated and hungry a little after seven, more than three hours after he had finally rid himself of Daniella Marquardt. Shoving the papers he had printed into his briefcase, he turned off the lights in his office and walked down to the operations room. Six men were working and they had a strong pot of coffee brewed. He poured himself a cup and spent a few minutes with each team member, talking in hushed tones about the project they were working on.

These were “firemen” of sorts. Each monitored the data flow, including video and audio, of ongoing operations. They were there to catch problems before they erupted and help put them out if they did. During the day, the room was filled with two dozen team members. Lower risk operations where handled by teams elsewhere in the building or onsite across the United States and the rest of the globe.

By the time Kane made it to his car, it was eight and he had compartmentalized the information he had compiled on Daniella’s case so that he was no longer thinking of Wagner or the baby the convict might have fathered.

Fingers dancing with irritation along the steering wheel, he tried to push Daniella into the same compartment, but she wouldn’t fit.

All those curves refused to yield.

With a growl in both his stomach and throat, he headed east out of the company’s parking structure, his car pointed toward a “gentleman’s” club where he could get a late meal and anything else his appetite required.

Forty minutes later, he pushed away his dinner plate filled with a few remnants of steak and asparagus. His gaze went to the wall opposite his table where women lined up shoulder-to-shoulder. He noted a cascading rainbow of blondes, redheads and brunettes, the color of their skin as varied as their hair. All he had to do was pick one and take her behind a curtain to one of the private rooms in the back.

Kane signed for his meal then approached the wall. There was a subtle wave of coming to attention among the women, their bodies shifting to emphasize what they considered their best feature. One brazen blonde turned to face the wall, an ass full of implants sticking out as she arched her back and spread her legs.

He wasn’t looking at asses, legs, or tits.

He was looking at eyes. In their gazes, he saw traces of clever, calculating, and voracious among a handful of qualities. Mostly, he saw empty.

“You don’t remember me?” one sandy blonde beauty asked after he finished looking in her eyes and started to move on.

He met her gaze again. Pale blue, tenacious, but foreign. It was only when he left her face and saw the sculpted muscles that he realized it was the aspiring cage fighter.

Kane didn’t answer, just moved on down the line until there were no more women to evaluate.

Then he went home, his cock thoroughly asleep in his pants and his mind restlessly pacing inside his skull.

* * *

O
pening
the door to the top floor penthouse Kane had leased when the company relocated to North Carolina, he found the hall lights on. The alarm system was counting down and he quickly entered his code, his other hand easing his pistol from its holster. Thumbing the safety off, he moved along one wall to where the entry hall intersected with the main corridor.

A man laughed softly then said something indistinguishable.

Recognizing the voice, Kane holstered his gun and turned the corner, glaring at where Reed Henley stood in the open doorway of the spare bedroom.

“Evening, boss. Was just getting ready to call you.”

“What?” a soft, feminine voice that had no business being in his home asked from inside the room.

Daniella’s head came into view, her eyes going wide. “You didn’t say this was—”

“In my office,” Kane rumbled, his gaze locked on Reed before turning sharply and walking away.

Blood beginning to boil, he heard Reed politely excuse himself, his tone dipping low as he said something that elicited a nervous laugh from the woman.

“Shut the door,” he ground out as Reed entered his office. As soon as they were alone, he fired off an accusation. “Is this some kind of payback? I picked you because I needed someone I could trust—”

Kane cut himself off as Reed raised an intrigued brow.

“You’ve trusted at least a dozen men in that building with your life in the last year alone.”

Kane’s mouth danced, his teeth shredding the inside of his lower lip. “I needed someone who could handle a distraught woman with a light touch. Don’t read anything into it. Now tell me why the hell she’s in my home?”

“Well,” Reed started with an eye roll. “A certain royal pain in the ass flew into town this afternoon from Qatar. Which means I didn’t have a safe house left to stash her in. Didn’t think you wanted me to drop her off at a hotel.”

Kane didn’t answer, but his hard gaze softened slightly—up until he realized his office chair was missing. With a glowering look, he picked up one of the visitor chairs and moved it behind his desk then snapped his briefcase open.

“Lindsey is working on getting a place first thing in the morning,” Reed added, checking his watch before throwing his boss a wink.

“Seems to me like you’re home a little early. Slim pickings at the club?” His expression warped from intrigued to knowing, a smirk lifting one side of his face. “Only spitballing here, but Alina just popped out a baby girl. Mia is working on a second Stark heir and you’re sprinting backwards away from a woman I wouldn’t think you’d give a second glance. Have you stopped to consider that your biological clock is starting—”

Kane silenced him with an icy glare. “You know me better.”

“All I know is that it’s Friday night and I’m off the clock,” Reed shot back with a loud laugh. “Like I said, Lindsey is working on securing a safe house. For now, that crib sure does look nice in there.”

Kane’s jaw dropped.

“You put a crib in my guest room?”

Reed didn’t respond, just chuckled on his way down the hall to bid Daniella and baby Christine a goodnight.

* * *

K
ane didn’t leave
his office after Reed went home. He hid behind the familiar comfort of his desk and sifted through the folders filled with print outs on Wagner’s associates. There were a few pages on Daniella, her adoptive parents, her biological mother, and her half-sister. Daniella had a bachelor’s degree in public administration and worked in the district office of her local school system as a sort of ombudsman for special needs students. She had inherited the three-bedroom ranch in which she currently lived from the Marquardts. She maintained only an insignificant amount of debt comprised of a little less than ten thousand in student loans and another twelve thousand remaining on her car. No balance on her two credit cards, no smaller accounts whatsoever. Never married, no one else using her address, so no serious relationship that he could see.

Not that he cared. It was just important to know all the players.

Yearbook photos found online from her high school showed that she had always been fluffy, played chess, was in the chorus and was on the track and field team for shot put and javelin. She’d either swapped her thick glasses for contact lenses or had laser surgery.

He snorted. Just your normal, mundane, taxpaying citizen whose only excitement in life was her wayward half-sister, until that sister died and a bunch of bikers connected to organized crime took a monetary interest in the orphaned baby she was determined to raise.

With the folder open to Daniella’s staff photo at the school district, Kane fell asleep in his chair. He jerked awake at a little past one in the morning, his mind simultaneously processing two facts. First, he hadn’t checked to make sure Reed re-set the alarm on his way out. Second, he had heard a sound.

Pulling his handgun from a side drawer, he eased around his desk and approached the office door, ears straining. Whoever was walking about was in the kitchen. The refrigerator shut, then he heard the microwave beep. Relaxing, he went to his desk and turned the banker’s light off before putting away the gun.

Either Daniella was heating formula for the baby, or he had a hungry hitman in his home.

Returning to the door, he waited for the sound of Daniella passing in the hall. He slowly counted off fifteen imaginary paces when he could no longer hear her footsteps, then cracked the door open a few inches. A faint glow from one of the bedside lamps in the guest room intruded into the main hall. Kane walked silently from his office to the entry area, confirmed that Reed had re-set the alarm then snuck down the main hall.

Reed had taken the missing office chair into the guest room. Daniella sat in it, slowly rocking the baby in her arms. Standing outside the ring of light, Kane watched the woman.

Love infused her face in the soft glow from the lamp, the total effect like spying on Bouguereau as he painted
L'Innocence
. The only thing missing was a lamb. Then, as if he didn’t have enough sensory overload looking at the woman, she began to sing ever so softly to Christine, her voice sweet, but the song sad.

Kane escaped down the hall to the sanctuary of his bedroom, Daniella’s lyrics chasing him like a vengeful ghost.

The moon done set and the sun won’t rise,

All around me cold black skies,

I can’t see you.

Ghosts against the winter sky,

The years, like clouds, roll on by,

I can’t see you.

That was the entire point, Kane thought, his chest constricting as he shut his bedroom door. Invisibility was his modus operandi—not being seen, not being looked into, not seeing others beyond what the job required. And if his world was dark and narrow because of that filter over his vision, he was fine with it.

There was power from living in a darkness where everyone else stumbled around blind.

Until Daniella Marquardt was out of the penthouse and his life, Kane would close his eyes to the light she offered.